


he's destroyed glory like a cigarette burnt photo

by queenmcgonagall



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, M/M, implied eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmcgonagall/pseuds/queenmcgonagall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s smile is too big, too flawed, too innocent; his hips are too thin. Louis can’t stop taking photos of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he's destroyed glory like a cigarette burnt photo

The photo is a little bit bent at the corner. There’s a thumb smudge off to the edge, like Louis was laughing so hard, he couldn’t be bothered to accurately line up the sight of the camera. Harry’s sprawled on the sand, the pale stripe of his tummy showing from where his red t-shirt has ridden up. His bracelets on his arm have shifted, so there’s a white line on his wrist where the sun hasn’t reached. His smile is tucked into the corner of his mouth, like he’s holding a secret there and Louis begs to know what the secret is and then catches himself, because he realizes he knows all of Harry’s secrets.

It had been one of those days. Where Harry had eaten his whole bowl of cereal, even the milk, and Louis had kissed his still-round cheek and told him he looked like a fucking cherub. He called Harry away from the small writing desk shoved under the big bay window, said  _Harry, put your poetry away_  and told him to get in the car, because they were going to the beach. 

Louis took so many photos that day. He took a picture of Harry sleeping in the car, tongue tucked between his teeth like a cat. He took a picture and laughed at Harry’s bleary eyes and too-red lips when he woke up and sucked him off in the bathroom of a 7-11 on the side of the I-98 highway. When Harry tumbled out of the car and ran towards the ocean, tearing off his t-shirt, clothes falling in a heap behind him, Louis snapped a shot of his bare bum, pale and round as the moon, and Harry crashing into the waves.

When they sat on a red checked blanket and Harry had watermelon juice all over his face and his lips were sticky with melted chocolate and his eyes were laughing, Louis had picked up the camera and clicked the shutter, capturing the way Harry tipped his head back and shrieked raucously at the seagulls threatening to eat Louis’s sandwich.

The pictures developed pretty well. A few were too bright, sunspots clashing together to make some strange psychedelic print, but Louis put every single one in a photo album. He kept one in his wallet. Not this one, not the red t-shirt one, because this one sits next to his shaving cream on the bathroom counter, so that in the morning after he makes Harry eat at least one pancake, he can look at the picture as he shaves and wonder what he did wrong.

The one in his wallet is Harry, fucked out, warm and sweet and soft in the sheets of a shitty motel. His pale arms are stretched above his head, the black points of the star standing out in stark contrast against the baby-skin on the secret part of his arm. His legs are pulled up, one knee crossed over the other. He’s naked, of course, and against his pale, barely-defined stomach his cock flops limply, soft after Louis having blown him for the second time that day, once on the beach behind the concession stand, his knees all sandy, and once in the shower that they’re pretty sure was spitting dirty water onto them. In the picture, he’s not smiling at Louis. He’s not frowning either. He’s just looking at Louis. Those green eyes stare at Louis until he wants to look down and see if there’s a hole in his stomach, because it sort of feels like Harry is looking right through him. Or maybe he’s looking into Louis, gazing at his veins and maybe poking his heart to watch it thump.

It wasn’t long after that day that Harry stopped eating. He would make Louis a nice meal and then sit and watch him eat it; Louis would exclaim with a fake cheerfulness in his voice just how good the meal was and he would pretend not to notice when Harry just pushed around the food on his plate and smiled shyly at Louis’s praise.  He’d let Louis do the washing up and when he thought he wasn’t looking, he’d dump his plate in the garbage. Louis wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going on.

Louis squints at the picture. It’s pretty hard to believe the Harry in the picture once existed, when the one lying in the bed next to him could be a whole new person. The Harry in the photo has a grin the size of his heart, big and throbbing with joy, and his eyes are wide and moony, staring at Louis with something a little like adoration. There’s flesh on his arms. Louis doesn’t know what his bones look like yet, with skins stretched too thinly across them. The Harry beside him sprawls across the bed, his hair a smoky halo on the pillow and his eyes half closed in exhaustion and elation. The sheet is twisted around his too-thin hips, and Louis swallows at the sight of Harry’s sharp pelvic bones making tiny tents in the sheet. His feet extend off the bed. They’re skeletal, the delicate bird-bones stretching the pale skin and they’re too defined. It’s scary.

Harry grins at him. His lips are cracked, dry, dead skin clinging to the corners like he doesn’t even have the energy to lick his lips. There are purple hollows under pale green eyes that usually glow and now just smolder like dying embers. The smile is brittle, sad, with a little bit too much desperation. It doesn’t reach his eyes. Louis tries not to zero in on the shocking thinness of Harry’s wrist as his arm wiggles across the sheets to line up against Louis’s. He doesn’t watch the way the ball of Harry’s shoulder seems too close to the surface, like there’s not enough skin and muscle holding it in place.

‘Why’re you looking at me like that?’ Harry’s voice is deep, raspy, a shock to Louis every time it falls out of his childlike mouth. 

Louis shrugs.

‘I dunno.’

He knows.

—————————

_2 years earlier_

‘Can I take a picture of you?’ Louis asks. He’s a little bit afraid the boy will say no.

He doesn’t though, he just nods, and watches the movement of Louis’s hands as they reach down under the bed for the old shitty camera he knows is stored underneath in a shoe box. It’s one of those cameras that develops the picture as soon as you’ve taken it, an old Polaroid.

They can hear the pulse of the music downstairs, drunken shouts. But they’re on the third floor of this really tall house and Louis has found himself in a bed with this lean gangly kid with springy hair and glowing eyes. He’s got hipbones that Louis wants to lose himself in, explore like a tiny bug, and these large hands that Louis wants on him all the time.

He hasn’t got a name yet. Louis doesn’t do names, much like he doesn’t do relationships. 

The boy leans back on the pillow, arm behind his head and smirks at Louis. He looks far too young to be smirking so self-assuredly at Louis. Then again, when Louis offered him a drag on his cigarette, the boy coughed and spluttered and maybe he isn’t so mature. 

Louis raises the camera to his eye and looks through the small dusty lens at the boy in the sheets. He smirks at Louis, daring him to take this picture. Louis reaches out quickly, his hand a blur, and digs his fingers into the boy’s side and all of a sudden he’s curled up, mouth open in a loud laugh and he’s twisted his head so he’s looking directly into the lens and  _click_ , Louis takes the picture.

It slides out the bottom and before Louis can grab it, a pale hand reaches for it and tugs it out of the camera. The boy in the sheets stares at it for a few minutes and then hands it over to Louis, a shy smile on his face. 

The picture is blurry from the motion of Louis’s hands.

‘I’m keeping this,’ Louis declares and carefully places it on the table next to the bed.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. It’s hot. I like you, you’re hot.’ Louis grins at him, teeth baring (he knows he probably looks a little scary), and brings the cigarette back to his mouth. He can smell the smoke all around them, curling in the sheets. The boy’s hair will probably smell like it tomorrow. Louis finds he likes that idea, likes to think that maybe after they’ve fallen asleep and one of them sneaks out by morning, the boy won’t be able to forget him. 

Louis likes to be remembered. He doesn’t want to be had, but he likes leaving pieces around so nobody can ever forget him, like the way he always leaves one sweater in Liam’s closet, just so that every time Liam opens up the wardrobe, he thinks of Louis. 

‘You’re not too bad yourself,’ the boy rasps out, his voice raw against the cigarette smoke that unwillingly coats his vocal cords. His fingers, long and pale, scratch at Louis’s hip and Louis wants to bat them away, tell him  _no touching_ , but it feels good and no one’s touched him like this in ages, so he lets the boy continue.

‘Yeah?’ Louis raises an eyebrow at him and takes an extra-long pull on the cigarette, noticing the way the boy’s eyes drop to his mouth, the way he licks his lips and his eyes darken a little bit. Louis purposefully opens his mouth in a small  _o_  and breathes the smoke across to the boy. He coughs a little bit, but when he looks back at Louis, his eyes are darker than ever, pupils blown.

‘Yeah,’ the boy breathes out, eyes trained on Louis’s mouth. ‘You got a name?’

‘Nope.’ Louis doesn’t offer up any explanation, just a blunt answer and the boy blinks a few times before relaxing back into the pillows.

‘Alright. Can I blow you again?’ He looks almost eager, like a child, and Louis thinks its sinful for those words to come out of a mouth as red as a rose, bitten raw by Louis himself. The boy looks like an angel lying in the sheets, as destroyed as Louis’s own cavernous pain, but endlessly beautiful. 

Louis doesn’t answer, just leans over and stubs his cigarette against the marked-up bedside table. He lets the butt fall to the floor and puts his arms behind his head. The boy takes that as an invitation and scrambles up, all loose limbs and too-long legs that threaten to slide off the small bed. 

He leans down and takes Louis’ cock in his mouth and Louis thinks he wants a picture of this too, so he takes the camera back up and snaps a shot of the boy with his cheeks straining around Louis, mouth red and stretched. The boy rolls his eyes and hums around Louis’s cock, fingers pressing firmly into Louis’s hipbones until Louis is sure there will be small bruises there tomorrow. Louis can see the lovely arch of the boy’s back, the smooth swell of his arse waggling in the air as he sucks his cheeks in and hollows out around Louis’s cock.

 _This is wildly inappropriate_ , Louis thinks, right before everything becomes much too bright and dizzy and overwhelming for him to have any coherent thoughts at all.

———————————————————————————————-

The next morning, the bed is empty. Cold. Louis’s not surprised. If he’d had the energy in him the night before, he would’ve kicked the boy out and told him to go downstairs and bug Niall for some cab-money. But the boy sucked cock too well and his warm hands on Louis’s stomach were a bit too comforting, so Louis had let him stay till morning. 

As he gets up and finds his clothes, he notices the picture from last night still on the bedside table. There’s a small burn mark in the corner and Louis kicks himself mentally, realizing he probably stubbed his cigarette out on the picture last night. It’s still beautiful though. The lighting is too dark, but the boy’s skin glows in the moonlight and his dark eyelashes create long shadows on pale, rounded cheeks. He’s too lovely, too pretty, and Louis almost aches to think the boy isn’t in every single one of the pictures Louis has ever taken, because he’s pretty sure the quality of every photo would be heightened dramatically by having those lit-up eyes and red lips in every one. 

He turns it over. Smirks slightly, because of course, the kid is just like him and can’t leave without leaving part of himself behind. Scrawled across the back of the photo, in messy, loose handwriting, the boy left a note.

_Harry_

_489 387 4739_

_in case you decide you have a name_

Louis smiles and tucks the picture into his back pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> this piece has the potential to be turned into a verse. prequels/sequels/accompanying verses are on the to-do list.


End file.
